


Family

by Floralfatality



Series: Adventures in Quarantine 2020 [3]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Bisexual Lance (Voltron), But just a little angst, Chaos, Domestic Fluff, Established Relationship, Family Feels, Family Fluff, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Fluff and Humor, Gay Keith (Voltron), In Case You Hadn't Already Caught On, In Fact Mostly Crack, M/M, Mostly Fluff, One Shot, Quarantine, Read Notes for Light Trigger Warning, Team as Family, This One's Also Very Gay, Video-Chats
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-29
Updated: 2020-06-29
Packaged: 2021-03-04 00:14:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 13,399
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24984388
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Floralfatality/pseuds/Floralfatality
Summary: A slender hand popped up over the lip of the table from the floor, clicking to accept the call, and Hunk popped up on the screen. He barely had a second to get a ‘hello’ in before Lance was right up in the web-cam, shrieking.‘HUNK, KEITH IS BULLYING ME, MAKE HIM STOP BULLYING ME.’Hunk blinked in surprise, taking a moment to absorb the sight before him. ‘Um… stop bullying him… please? Why are you shirtless? Did I interrupt something?’‘Just Lance being an idiot as usual,’ said Keith coolly.***Just a fic about a bunch of people who really love and miss each other engaging in the chaos that is a quarantine video-chat.
Relationships: Adam/Shiro (Voltron), Allura & Coran & Hunk & Keith & Lance & Pidge | Katie Holt & Shiro, Hunk/Shay (Voltron), Keith & Keith's Wolf & Lance (Voltron), Keith/Lance (Voltron)
Series: Adventures in Quarantine 2020 [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1690312
Comments: 12
Kudos: 121





	Family

**Author's Note:**

> Part three is finally here!!! This took me so long because I went back to my regular perfectionist ways because it's really hard to write about a video-chat without it being purely dialogue. This part introduces the majority of the other characters featured in this series and also fleshes out the universe a bit! Can probably be read as a stand-alone but there are small references to previous fics in the series. I really hope you guys like this one because it really was a labour of love.
> 
> ***TRIGGER WARNING***  
> I tried to portray the anxieties people face due to the pandemic and quarantine so if you're sensitive to that right now (understandably) then maybe give this part in particular a miss.
> 
> Big thanks to my gal, Migmog, for beta-ing and dealing with my anxiety over this fic, and to my sister, [honest_pebble](https://archiveofourown.org/users/honest_pebble/pseuds/honest_pebble), for putting up with my infuriating need to never stop editing. <3 <3 <3 Starting all the parts in this series with some kind of crude joke because honest_pebble thinks they're ew and I think that's funny.
> 
> I hope that all of you are staying safe out there. Big love to you all! <3

‘Lance, no, what are you doing?’

‘It won’t fit!’

‘You can’t just ram it in there!’

‘What if I just…’

‘Ah! Stop! Changing the angle isn’t going to do anything!’

‘Neither is you whin-’

‘Shit, LANCE!’

‘…’

‘…’

‘…’

‘…’

‘We’re gonna need more towels.’

Keith carefully stepped back from the refrigerator, eyes still trained on the wobbling freezer balanced atop. While it didn’t seem to be in danger of falling anymore, he didn’t trust it not to pull a double bluff and squish his idiot partner as soon as he dared to look away; however, when the freezer remained stationary, his gaze eventually lowered to the puddle forming on their kitchen floor instead and he lifted his foot, shaking out a wet sock and feeling more and more hopeless by the second. 

When they’d first moved in seven months ago, occasionally de-icing the ancient refrigerator seemed like a small price to pay in comparison to the deal they’d managed to get on the place; Lance had been looking for somewhere close to his new school, Keith had been looking for a landlord that wouldn’t kick him out for hiding a 60-pound husky under his bed… this cheap little one-bed apartment had practically fallen into their laps at a time of great need, not to mention given them the push they’d needed to finally talk about moving in together. Keith would have done it eventually, of course: he just didn’t want to rush things. For Lance’s sake. Keith had been fine. And also, he’d had Kosmo to think about. What if Kosmo wasn’t ready? Keith was no coward. 

Shut up, Shiro.

‘Leave the shelf,’ Keith said, dragging a hand down his face. ‘Let’s just mop up the water before it reaches the floor-boards. If they warp, we’ll never get our deposit back.’

‘Stupid shelf,’ muttered Lance, ignoring Keith’s very sound advice and trying, once again, to shove it back inside. At least he was less aggressive about it this time. ‘Stupid giant bowl making me move the stupid shelf. How did we even get it out if it won’t fit back in???’

‘Lance, chill,’ Keith said, keeping an eye on the boxed ice-demon looming over his boyfriend’s head as he moved over to the drawers to look for more mopping supplies.

‘I’ll chill when the fridge does!’ cried Lance, and then his face flickered through several expressions in quick succession like the character-creator menu of a video-game. Keith watched him cycle through them with amusement until he finally settled on a scowl, obviously deciding that his irritation had to take priority over any fortuitous puns. ‘We’ve been at this for hours and all we have to show for it is our crappy broken refrigerator and our new indoor pool!’ he continued, throwing an emphatic hand towards the rapidly spreading water at his feet. 

Keith’s heart jolted.

‘Lance, quick, the edge!’

Lance’s eyes dropped to the tiles and, seeing the threat inching gradually towards their wooden floor, his face took another spin through the character-creator, finally landing on an expression of panic which would have been funny if Keith wasn’t so sure he was mirroring it himself.

Keith snatched the last towel from the drawer by his hip and threw it over to Lance who, the moron he was, jumped up to catch it like a fucking NBA player, splashing down in the puddle and pushing the already quickly advancing water even further along in its tracks. 

‘Lance!’ he blustered and Kosmo was barking now, either out of confusion, fear, or just the sheer need to be a part of whatever was going on.

‘I got it, I got it!’ Lance snapped, slamming the towel down over the water with a ‘Ha!’ of triumph. ‘Dude, I need another towel, quick.’

Keith shushed the dog who immediately clammed up, tilting his head with a look of mild offence, and then started rummaging through the cupboards in the hopes that they had something useful squirrelled away in a corner somewhere. He hadn’t really expected this to be such an ordeal. When the landlord had explained that the only way to de-ice the fridge was to place bowls of boiling water on the shelves and let the steam melt it, Keith had thought for a moment that he was joking. Well, it was no joke now, especially with the excess dripping from under the refrigerator door and threatening to swallow the entirety of their huge deposit in one very disappointing and un-theatrical flash-flood. It was like watching Godzilla be taken down by a pea-shooter.

‘We don’t have any more,’ Keith grunted, alarm prickling through his chest as he raked through the last of their junk drawers.

‘Well, what are we gonna do?!’ Lance shrieked from the floor.

‘I don’t know!’ Keith barked back, hurrying back over to the sink in the hopes that there was something useful in there.

‘Frick,’ Lance muttered, ‘um, um…’ 

He went suspiciously quiet for a moment and Keith had been with Lance long enough to know that that was never a good sign. 

He spun around just in time to catch his boyfriend in the process of yanking his shirt over his head, struggling as the collar got caught around his ears and whipping it off as quickly as if it were on fire; then, without a second’s further thought, Lance pressed the bundle down over the remainder of the expanding pool, smothering the last of Keith’s panic and making room, instead, for his bewilderment.

The two of them stayed frozen for a moment, staring at the now soggy shirt like it was some kind of alien creature.

‘That works, I guess,’ Keith said finally.

‘Well, of course it works for you, mullet,’ huffed Lance, getting to his feet. ‘You get to see my startlingly handsome physique in all its glory. Me? I just lost a perfectly good shirt.’

‘It’s fine. Just dry it out.’ Keith picked up one of the sopping-wet rags from the floor, his face scrunching with distaste. ‘We should be okay for now, but we’ll have to squeeze these out and re-use them.’

‘You’ve got to be kidding me,’ Lance groaned. ‘I went to college. I spend my days trying to manage thirteen-year-old e-boys. How is _this_ the most stressful thing I’ve ever done?’

Keith smirked twisting moisture from the old towel over the sink. ‘More stressful than –’

‘If you bring that up one more time, I swear, I will break up with you right here, right now.’

‘So, it’s a win-win,’ he grinned, leaning back against the counter.

‘I’m serious, Keith.’

Keith shrugged. ‘I think it’s sweet that your nephew is comfortable enough with you to ask you for sex tips.’

‘HE IS ONE OF THE THIRTEEN-YEAR-OLD E-BOYS!’ Lance screeched, and Keith really had to fight to maintain his cool air of nonchalance in the face of his boyfriend’s adorably outraged expression.

‘I didn’t say he _should_ ask,’ Keith countered, taking on a thoughtful look. ‘And his tiktoks aren’t that bad; I think they’re supposed to be satire.’

‘WHY ARE YOU WATCHING MY NEPHEW’S TIKTOKS?! SINCE WHEN DO YOU EVEN USE TIKTOK?! WHAT IS HAPPENING RIGHT NOW?!’

Keith looked his boyfriend dead in the eyes, watched the horror dawn as Keith brought his hands up to either side of his head, fingers pointed like guns at his temples, and then he rolled his eyes back in a flutter, dropping his tongue low over his chin.

Lance screamed.

Keith wiped the saliva from his chin with a grin. ‘And no one will ever believe you.’

At that moment, the laptop on the coffee table started chirping with an incoming call and Lance abandoned his choked babbling to sprint across the room, hopping over the back of the couch, only to catch his ankle on the edge and go tumbling over onto the floor.

‘Ow, _mierda_!’

Keith started away from the counter, raising a concerned eyebrow. ‘Lance?’

‘I’m okay!’ he called back and Keith relaxed, rolling his eyes and making his way across the room to check that he really hadn’t hurt himself. That was the last thing the hospitals needed right now: geniuses like his boyfriend who managed to get themselves injured without even being allowed to leave their homes.

A slender hand popped up over the lip of the table from the floor, clicking to accept the call, and Hunk popped up on the screen. He barely had a second to get a ‘hello’ in before Lance was right up in the web-cam, shrieking.

‘HUNK, KEITH IS BULLYING ME, MAKE HIM STOP BULLYING ME.’

Hunk blinked in surprise, taking a moment to absorb the sight before him. ‘Um… stop bullying him… please? Why are you shirtless? Did I interrupt something?’

‘Just Lance being an idiot as usual,’ said Keith coolly, dropping onto the couch and tugging his half-naked boyfriend back towards him by the shoulder. ‘Let me see your ankle.’

‘I was not!’ cried Lance indignantly, settling back and propping his leg up across Keith’s knees: he knew better than to argue about this by now, even if he had no problem with arguing with him on everything else. ‘See, Keith, this is why Hunk’s my favourite. Hunk would never slander me this way.’

‘He one hundred percent would and you know it,’ he said, rotating Lance’s ankle back and forth a couple of times, perhaps a little more carefully than he would for a client at the gym. ‘That doesn’t hurt?’

‘It’s true,’ shrugged Hunk, and Lance, who had been dutifully shaking his head, stopped, looking utterly betrayed.

‘Is no one on my side?’ he faux-gasped. ‘Is Lancey-Lance doomed to walk this Earth alone forever?’

Kosmo jumped up, his front paws landing on Lance’s thigh, and he fixed the man with an intense stare, tongue flickering out towards him.

‘Oh no, you had your chance,’ Lance huffed, stealing back his ankle – Keith was just about done anyway – and swivelling around to clap his hands around the husky’s fuzzy face. ‘You lost your title the moment you chose spag and cheese over me.’

Hunk’s eyes went wide, his face growing pale. ‘Did… did you just say spag and cheese?’ he uttered as if they were forbidden words.

‘I wish I didn’t have to,’ grunted Lance, making space for Kosmo to sprawl out across both of their laps, ‘but Keith and, like, half our neighbours across the street apparently all think it’s a valid combination.’

Hunk’s horror only intensified. ‘Why would you even ask that? What kind of Hell-scape do you live in?’

Keith tried his best to keep a straight face as Lance glared in his direction, but he could feel his lip twitching as he struggled to hold all of his smugness inside. 

He was never going to forget Lance’s face when, three hours after their little arts and crafts session, they’d checked back to find that not only had Keith’s admirer replied, _Too bad. At least spag and cheese will never leave me <3_ but an additional six signs had been posted from various windows across the building, the majority declaring their love for spag and cheese. Keith had almost busted a lung laughing while Lance gaped, making incomprehensible noises of outrage and gesturing ferociously towards the window as if it had just insulted his mamá. Keith really hadn’t expected his prank to work so well. 

‘I don’t get the big deal,’ he said. ‘It’s still just pasta and cheese sauce – the pasta’s just a different shape.’

‘No, no, no, it’s about the texture!’ Hunk exclaimed and Keith startled at the sheer conviction behind it. ‘The macaroni holds the sauce inside like little chewy, cheesy pockets, but it’d slip right off skinny spaghetti noodles! It’s just so wrong on so many levels!’

‘Well, sorry,’ Keith replied with a shrug, ‘but you’ve been out-voted.’

‘That vote was rigged and I’m gonna prove it!’ Lance bristled, pointing an accusatory finger towards Keith. ‘Just as soon as I find that sign.’

Keith didn’t bother trying to hide his grin this time, knowing it would drive his partner crazy. Lance had been adamant about finding whatever sign Keith had put up in the bedroom window, refusing to believe that so many of their neighbours could be such ‘tasteless heathens’, but despite this claim, the two of them had still spent the evening scrawling messages back and forth with them. 

It was a little hard to coordinate, especially since the spag and cheese comments had apparently sparked offence in Keith and Lance’s own building, resulting in many, many more participants and many more conversations all going on at once, but Keith couldn’t even be annoyed about the extra effort when Lance spent the entire night buzzing with what they’d done. They’d _connected_ people, he insisted, scribbling away like a toddler on any kind of paper they could find, and Keith had draped himself over his partner from behind, watching with a chin hooked over his shoulder and an immovable smile as Lance scratched out messages in what he described as passive aggressive colours, whatever that meant. It was almost embarrassing how happy Lance made him just by being his ridiculous self. 

Which was exactly why he was going to make him suffer.

‘‘Sup, bitches. How’s it – Why is Keith making goo-goo eyes? And why is Lance shirtless? Oh, God, what’s going on?’

Keith snapped back into the present at the sound of Pidge’s growing horror, abruptly realising that his smirk had turned into something far too fond for the likes of their friends to witness. Lance turned his head towards him, eyes sparkling with mischief.

‘Aw, babe, were you getting an eyeful?’ He plastered on a cheesy grin, framing his chin with a finger gun, and Keith’s skin burned with the feeling of his friends’ eyes on them.

‘Shut up,’ he said for lack of any better defence, fists tightening in Kosmo’s fur. ‘I wasn’t staring.’

‘You kind of were, dude,’ said Hunk. It sounded disgustingly fond.

‘Again,’ said Pidge, ‘I’d kind of like an explanation for the whole half-naked thing. Unless it’s something weird and kinky. Ew, if it’s kinky just don’t tell me.’

‘Go get a damn shirt!’ Keith snapped, both vocally and mentally, whacking his boyfriend repeatedly on the arm until he slipped out from under Kosmo and got to his feet, giggling. 

‘Fine,’ Lance said tenderly, dropping a kiss on the top of Keith’s head as he walked by, much to his disgruntlement. ‘If it’s going to be such a distraction for you.’

Keith’s eyes followed him to the bedroom before he even realised what he was doing. Thankfully, his friends seemed to have decided he’d suffered enough and let it go.

‘I can’t believe you guys are still gross,’ said Pidge.

Did he say friends? He meant tormenters.

‘I thought for sure you guys would have torn each other apart by now,’ she continued.

‘Nope. Sorry to disappoint,’ he replied, frowning at the blackness of her little chat window. ‘Why do you even bother clicking to add video when you only ever call us in the dark?’

‘Aesthetic,’ she drawled, followed by a loud rustling sound, heralding the presence of junk food.

‘What kind of aesthetic?’ scoffed Lance, re-emerging from the bedroom. ‘Cryptid chic?’ He was thoroughly tangled in his new shirt, the fabric stretched across his eyes between the two sleeves that were keeping his arms trapped up in the air. He seemed to be attempting to navigate back over to the couch using echo-location, judging by the volume he was yelling at. ‘We can barely see you!’ he grunted out despite being completely blind at that moment. ‘Turn a light on!’

When he finally got within reaching distance, Keith tugged on the bottom of his shirt until it popped over his head, revealing his flushed boyfriend grinning unashamedly.

Cute.

God, Keith was dating an actual toddler.

‘No,’ Pidge replied, her glasses glinting in what little light there was from her screen. ‘I’m in my cave.’

‘Well, get out of your cave!’ Lance said, trying and failing to shift the back half of their dog from his spot on the couch. When it was clear Kosmo wasn’t budging, Lance resigned himself to settling on the floor and using him as a head-rest instead. Kosmo didn’t seem to mind. ‘I want to see you, Pidgeon!’

‘You sound like my parents,’ she complained, but a moment later, a flashlight flickered on, illuminating her features from below. ‘Happy?’ 

‘Just as scary as always,’ replied Keith and Pidge stuck her tongue out at him before biting down on what was most likely a peanut butter cookie.

‘Please tell me you’re eating real food,’ fretted Hunk.

‘Will you quit worrying?’ she replied, rolling her eyes. ‘I’m 21. I can look after myself.’

Keith very much doubted that. Everyone knew that Hunk was the only thing standing between Pidge and a lifetime of instant noodles, and he’d made the decision to move in with Shay for the duration of the quarantine. She kept texting Keith pictures of her boyfriend in the five stages of guilt, most of which involved stress-baking. Keith might feel bad for him if he wasn’t a closed-minded mac and cheese simp.

‘Uh huh,’ said Lance, also sceptical, ‘and when was the last time you left your cave?’

The flashlight illuminated her pensive expression from below. ‘Um, it’s still Monday, right?’

‘Pidge!’ Hunk squawked, eyes gaping as wide as his mouth. It was Saturday.

‘I’m kidding!’ she said hurriedly. ‘I went to the store, like, five hours ago. I even bought a vegetable.’

Keith gave her a suspicious look. ‘ _A_ vegetable?’ he pressed. ‘As in a single vegetable?’

She grinned, the shadows over her face rearranging themselves into something reminiscent of a leering gargoyle: frankly, terrifying. ‘Carrot help you see in the dark.’

Hunk swallowed. ‘See, your continued use of the singular form is what concerns me.’

‘Not my fault you abandoned me,’ she said, nibbling smugly on her cookie. ‘By the time you return, I pledge to be at least 90% corn syrup.’

Hunk dipped his head sombrely. ‘I have truly made a grave mistake.’

‘Is Shay there?’ Keith asked, suddenly remembering the weird string of emojis she’d texted him around midday. She’d never replied to his answering trio of question marks, leaving him in the dark and almost tempted to ask Lance for help deciphering; his common sense had won out, deciding that he’d rather not spend his afternoon being mocked mercilessly for his emoji illiteracy. Been there, done that.

‘Running,’ Hunk explained. ‘She should be back in a minute. She actually mentioned wanting to talk to you; something about rubbing something in your face?’

Keith froze half-way through a head-pat, confused, and Kosmo looked up at him as if offended, nudging his hand with his wet nose. Shay? _Shay_ wanted to rub something in his face? What – 

Wait.

‘No,’ he breathed, suddenly realising exactly what she’d been trying to communicate this afternoon.

‘Babe?’ Lance questioned, poking him in the leg when he didn’t offer any response.

Hunk’s head abruptly swivelled in the direction of something off-screen, his face lighting up like Christmas in July. ‘Hey! Yeah, it’s him.’

‘No,’ Keith said again, voice strengthened this time by the bitter tang of denial, and Pidge and Lance exchanged a look of confusion as Shay appeared on-screen, still decked out in her full jogging suit and panting lightly from her run.

‘Keith!’ she said, her habitual cheeriness goading him like a cattle prod to his side as she leant over the back of Hunk’s chair with a wide smile. Even her clothes were mocking him, from her sunny yellow hijab to the smiley face stitched into the top corner of her leggings.

‘I beat you,’ she announced with all the amicability of wishing someone a happy birthday.

‘No!’ Keith yelled in defiance, then took a moment to untangle his tongue so that the English language might grace him with some more flavourful vocabulary. ‘It’s only been four days! You can’t be serious!’

‘I am completely serious,’ she replied, and even when she was being smarmy there was a soft excitedness to her tone that made it impossible to really be mad about it. ‘My skinny Jared did fifty press-ups before your skinny Ahmed, and _you_ owe me thirty dollars.’

‘No!’ Keith said yet again before catching himself and he let out a groan of frustration, both at himself and at the loss, much to her obvious delight. ‘We were so close,’ he complained, letting his head fall back over the couch lip in defeat.

‘Were you guys… betting on your clients?’ Hunk asked, sounding a little surprised.

‘The gym put us on reduced pay,’ Keith grumbled. ‘Gotta make some extra money somewhere.’

‘Or in your case, lose some,’ Shay let slip from the corner of a smirk and Keith lifted his head again to send her a glare.

‘OOOOOOOOH!’ hollered Lance, looking far, far too satisfied for Keith’s taste. ‘Suck it, Keith!’ 

Keith kicked him in the head; just a gentle love-tap for the love of his life, the man who was always on his side, the man who always went out of his way to be so supportive of him.

Lance whipped around, eyes narrowed and burning with the intensity of a small toaster fire. 

This was war.

‘Wow, Shay, I didn’t know you had it in you,’ said Pidge, but Keith’s attention was on Lance who was now rocking onto his back, raising his legs for a retaliatory strike. ‘I’m impressed.’

‘Personal training is a competitive business,’ Shay defended as Lance lashed out with a foot and Keith jerked his leg back to avoid the blow, causing Kosmo to scramble to his feet at the sudden movement and jump from the couch with an exasperated puff, plodding over to the corner to curl up in relative peace. Lance’s brow wrinkled with childish irritation as Keith kept dodging his kicks, and it only turned more petulant when Keith managed to grab one of his ankles and refused to let it go.

‘No fair, Keith, that’s my bad ankle!’ he whined, chancing another blow only for Keith to capture his second prisoner.

‘You don’t have a bad ankle,’ he said, trying to keep a straight face because he knew how much it annoyed Lance when he made these things seem effortless. Lance’s spidery legs didn’t stand a chance against Keith’s well-toned biceps. ‘Just fold already.’

‘Never!’ Lance exclaimed, bucking on the floor in an attempt to wrench himself free. He looked sort of like the hippos on the Discovery channel, rolling around in mud-patches to keep cool. Keith loved hippos.

‘Um, what did I just log in to?’

Keith’s head snapped round towards the laptop at the sound of his brother’s voice and he caught sight of the man staring cluelessly at the scene before him. Keith realised that all he was probably seeing from their chat-window was Lance’s legs suspended in mid-air by Keith’s grip and Keith couldn’t really blame him for looking a bit lost.

‘Keith lost a bet,’ explained Hunk.

‘And now he’s attempting to re-establish dominance by conquering his twig of a boyfriend,’ added Pidge.

‘Hey!’ Keith said at the same time as Lance, though probably for different reasons: there was no ‘attempting’ about it. Dominance was his.

‘My money’s on Keith,’ continued Hunk. ‘Lance doesn’t stand a chance.’

Shay hummed thoughtfully. ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘Did you see how Keith was looking at him? He may forfeit the match if Lance so much as bats an eyelash.’

‘Seriously?’ Keith grumbled at his friends’ laughter, thinking that he should probably get a better handle on his facial expressions if he didn’t want to be ridiculed for the rest of his life. ‘No one else gets this kind of abuse,’ he complained.

‘That’s because you’re fun to tease,’ grinned Lance and Keith shot him a scowl, tightening his grip and settling back against the couch arm, pretending not to notice when Lance began to struggle again. On looking back at the screen, he noted, with disbelief, the fan of papers in Shiro’s hand. 

‘Shiro, it’s, like, 9pm on a Saturday. Why are you still working?’

‘Because he’s useless,’ Lance huffed (and puffed), finally giving in and going limp in the small space between the couch and the coffee-table. ‘Seriously, man,’ he shouted up towards the call. ‘You’ve been a teacher longer than me. How do you _still_ not know how to use ConnectEd?’

‘I’ve never had to do my teaching online,’ Shiro said sheepishly. ‘It’s hard enough to get teenagers invested in physics when they’re right in front of you, never mind over some random platform – in fact, I think piloting jets was easier than this.’ 

He looked like he had more to say, but then he paused and got a far-away look in his eyes, and Keith felt a familiar knot tighten in his stomach when it went on just that little bit too long.

‘Shiro?’ he prompted, trying not to sound too urgent. While after almost seven years Shiro’s flashbacks were a lot less frequent, Keith knew they hadn’t disappeared completely. Shiro would probably _like_ him to believe that, but Keith wasn’t as oblivious as people seemed to think, at least not when it came to his brother. 

Adam kept him updated so that whenever Shiro was having a particularly bad week, Keith knew to stop by and give him something else to think about: like how he’d almost punched a client for making yet another homophobic comment; or how he was going to kill the building manager soon if he didn’t get the elevator fixed, because there was only so many times he was willing to walk up ten flights of stairs for Shiro before he started asking him to meet him down in the lobby. It was always stupid little things to keep him grounded, and Keith knew Shiro could tell what he was doing but he’d never tried to stop him; in fact, sometimes Keith wondered if he was really the one doing the comforting in those situations. 

It hit Keith, not for the first time since the lockdown started, but with the force of a wrecking-ball now that the situation had presented itself so clearly, that Shiro was all alone right now. Adam was on so many extra shifts in the ambulance because of the pandemic and Keith was trapped in his apartment. If Shiro fell into another rut, which was considerably more likely now that they all had so much time to themselves to think, no one would be there for him until Adam returned home, and Keith really didn’t trust his brother to reach out if he needed help. He liked to call Keith stubborn, but he was a big, hulking hypocrite.

‘Hello?’ 

Keith snapped out of his thoughts only to realise that the question hadn’t been directed at him. 

‘Earth to Shiro?’ Lance continued in his ‘teacher voice’, a slightly condescending and yet strangely welcoming tone that worked as effectively on Shiro as it had on Keith. Keith still had him by the ankles, but Lance had managed to manoeuvre himself into a kind of V-sit that, frankly, looked very uncomfortable. ‘Care to share your thoughts with the class?’

‘Sorry,’ blinked Shiro in response. ‘Didn’t mean to zone out. I’m just exhausted. I was thinking maybe I should just tell the vice-principal that I don’t have internet. Or a computer.’ He paused for another second. ‘Or my arm.’

Hunk’s face twisted, uncertain. ‘You mean like you lost your prosthetic or, like, you’re actually just gonna say “I don’t have an arm, bye”?’

Shiro thought for a moment. ‘Yes,’ he replied.

Pidge took up the conversation from there, rambling about some new innovation in prosthetic tech, and Keith almost didn’t notice himself beginning to drift too far into his thoughts again until he felt Lance’s hands close around his wrists.

His boyfriend was bent at an unnatural angle, looking like he was struggling to breathe and yet still grinning with determination, a familiar spark in his eye that brought a warmth to Keith’s chest; one which Keith knew he couldn’t translate to his face right now. Lance pried Keith’s fingers loose one by one until his feet were on the floor once more and Keith let him do so, watching the focus in his expression with an anticipation he couldn’t really explain until Lance slid back up on to the couch next to him and Keith realised that that was what he’d been waiting for the whole time.

Lance gave Keith a questioning nudge with his shoulder, an eyebrow raised almost imperceptibly with concern, and Keith offered him a twitch of a smile in response, shaking his head to indicate that it was fine; it didn’t matter. He should have known it wouldn’t work.

Lance’s face rumpled with dissatisfaction, a childish expression that plucked again at the edge of the tarp attempting to smother the warmth in Keith’s chest, and he somehow shuffled even closer, slipping an arm around Keith’s back and tugging him gently yet insistently into his side until Keith gave in and shifted to settle against him. Just when Keith assumed he was done, Lance dropped his head against Keith’s with a soft bump and spoke softly so no one else would hear.

‘He’ll be okay, you know. I’ve been checking up on him.’

And of course he had. Keith felt the tarp tear free and a rush of warmth flood through him, a mixture of love for his boyfriend and embarrassment for not having realised sooner. Lance spent half of his work-days chatting back and forth with Shiro on account of his abysmal IT skills; there was no way all of that was shop-talk. In fact, he knew it wasn’t, because Lance always made a point to call Keith into the room when he knew he wasn’t busy, and they definitely didn’t get anything done when he was there. Maybe that was the point: a way to take a breather whenever one of them was getting overwhelmed, and a way for Keith to get some relief from his constant anxiety over his brother’s mental health. He hadn’t even considered that it was all intentional.

He felt all the tension flow out of his muscles and he sank further into Lance’s side, hiding his face against his shoulder. He really _was_ that oblivious.

‘Right,’ he mumbled. ‘Thanks. Sorry.’

He felt Lance’s laughter more than heard it. ‘Don’t apologise,’ he chuckled, tucking a strand of hair behind Keith’s ear. ‘Did you really not realise? I don’t give out free advice to just anyone, you know.’ There was a brief pause when Keith didn’t respond. ‘Wow. You’re even more dense than I thought.’

Keith was about to grumble out his signature ‘shut up’ when he felt something press into his stomach and looked down to see Kosmo burying his nose there, eyes aimed up towards him in an expression that seemed to say ‘play nice’. He immediately softened, brushing his fingers through the thick poof of fur around his neck and resolving to just let Lance have this one. He guessed he’d earned at least one free-pass.

‘Are you serious?’ said Pidge suddenly. ‘We look away for 0.5 seconds and you two are practically in each other’s laps.’

Keith couldn’t bring himself to care this time, so he simply stuck his tongue out, parroting her earlier response. Maybe he was okay with being a little bit gross if it meant he got to drift here in his contentment, sandwiched between his boyfriend and his dog. 

‘A man has needs, Pidge,’ Lance replied sagely as said dog muscled his way back up into their laps, fed up of being left out and deciding to bury Keith behind a wall of fur so tall that he could barely see the laptop screen over it. ‘Speaking of which: Shiro, you had a question, right?’

Keith let out a noise of exasperation at the crude link and Lance gave him a teasing squeeze around the waist. 

‘Uh, yeah, I did have one question,’ Shiro said sheepishly, rubbing the back of his neck. ‘Sorry.’

‘Hey, no, don’t sweat it, man,’ Lance waved him off. ‘I know the website sucks. Fire away.’

Shiro smiled gratefully at that. ‘Okay, uh, how do you upload audio files? It keeps telling me they’re incompatible.’

‘You probably need to convert them,’ Lance said and then launched into a spiel about websites and .mp3s that Shiro seemed to vaguely follow while Keith sank further and further into his side, getting drowsy from the warmth of both his boyfriend and his dog. Saturdays were always busy days for him since a lot of people took weekend sessions when they had to work in the week. Doing everything online had only added an extra dimension to his job and left him not only physically, but mentally exhausted.

He may have actually started to doze off a little, dipping above and below the surface of sleep as the conversation rose and fell in his ears, but he suddenly jolted awake when Lance started shaking (or shimmying was probably more accurate) him against his shoulder, calling his name insistently.

Keith looked up at his boyfriend and Lance’s eyes were bright, sparkling with an excitement Keith knew well and often had trouble saying no to: it was the same look that had convinced him to write the original reply to their neighbour’s sign, and the same one that had coerced him into having a friendly push-up contest with one of Lance’s exes at a college party.

It took him a few split-seconds to realise that the feeling creeping up on him was dread. His body had become accustomed to Lance’s fits of hysteria, so much so that he could now detect them as easily as a rumbling stomach signalled hunger. 

‘What’s going on?’ he asked hesitantly.

‘We should do that too!’ Lance burst, bouncing in his seat.

Keith looked at him, lost and a little wary. ‘Do… Do what?’

Lance frowned in exasperation. ‘Were you seriously asleep, mullet? That’s so rude.’

‘I’m tired!’ Keith said defensively, dropping his chin back onto his shoulder. ‘I was comfortable.’

‘Oh yeah?’ Lance responded. ‘And what if I decide I don’t want to be your pillow anymore?’

‘At least spag and cheese will never leave me,’ Keith grinned and then jumped backwards when Lance swatted at him, prompting Kosmo to huff and nudge him again with his nose, this time in annoyance as he tried to catch a few Zs of his own.

‘I was just telling everyone what my plans were for my winnings,’ Shay graciously explained, probably to stop an argument more than anything else. She’d acquired herself a chair at some point and was now halfway through a bottle of water so he must have been out for a while.

Lance snapped back into his excitement as easily as putting on a shir- Scrap that; as easily as putting on a hat, and Keith bounced back again as his boyfriend jumped back into motion. 

‘She’s going to buy material to make face-masks for the hospital!’ he said excitedly and Keith felt his expression soften.

‘That’s actually really cool, Shay.’ 

He should have known she’d spend his money on something like that; the last time she’d won a bet against him, she’d donated the money to the cat shelter down the street. You could always trust Shay to find a way to turn losing into a good thing; not that that meant he’d be making a habit out of it. He still had his pride to think about, especially when no one else seemed to care about damaging it.

Speaking of which.

‘Lance was suggesting you guys do the same thing,’ supplied Shiro, clearly amused by Lance’s enthusiasm, but only because he knew Keith would be the one dealing with the brunt of it as usual. He also knew better than anyone how little patience Keith had for finnicky things like sewing. Jerk.

Lance was nodding fervently and there was that look again, messing with Keith’s sense of reason and drowning it under layers of irrational impulses tied specifically to his raging homosexuality.

‘We don’t even know how to sew,’ Keith argued pathetically. He already knew it was a lost cause, especially since he knew the masks would be going to the hospital where several of their friends worked. Hell, with that in mind, he kind of wanted to do it; he just hated to go down without a fight. Lance’s ego was big enough as it was.

‘Excuse you, mullet,’ Lance said indignantly. ‘I sewed your pants up last winter, didn’t I?’

‘And I had to throw them out anyway,’ Keith pointed out. 

‘Well, then I’ll practise!’ he huffed. ‘I want to do something to help. I know you do too: don’t pretend. Your heart is softer and squishier than you let on. In fact,’ he said, turning back towards the laptop, ‘we should all do it!’ 

Shiro’s eyes widened, fear visible even despite the poor quality of his video feed. Keith smirked and just barely resisted the urge to childishly flip him off. There’d be no telling who he was directing it to through the camera.

‘You better not be including me in this, McClain,’ warned Pidge. ‘The last time I picked up a sewing-needle, Matt ended up in the emergency room.’

‘Well, lucky for you, that’s where the masks are going too,’ he snarked, wedging a hand against his hip. ‘Come on, guys, it’s for a good cause!’

‘I agree,’ said Shay. ‘I think it will be fun to do it all together. We can all help each other out.’

Keith could feel his will to fight being slowly sanded away. Why had he surrounded himself with so many genuinely good people? Bank robbers and serial killers would never ask him to take up sewing. Keith had such poor taste in friends.

‘Well, you know I’ll definitely give it a shot,’ Hunk said cheerily and Lance let out a ‘whoop!’

‘Hunk, buddy, my man; you’re really hanging onto that trophy for Lance’s favourite guy. I might have to get you a sash. Ooooo, or I could _make_ you a sash with my awesome new sewing skills.’ He whipped around, getting back up in Keith’s face, eyes half-lidded with a challenge. ‘Unless you wanna take a shot at the title?’

Keith put a palm on his partner’s forehead and pushed him away. ‘No thanks. Being your boyfriend is annoying enough.’

Lance only came right back, even closer now, pouting right up in Keith’s face. ‘C’mon, Keith, I’ll teach you. It’ll be fuuuuuun.’

Keith refused to look him in the eyes. It’d be all over if he did. ‘I think you and I have very different definitions of the word fun.’

‘KeEeEeIiIith,’ Lance yowled like of a pack of pubescent hyenas and it only took a few seconds before Keith couldn’t take it anymore. He sighed clapping a hand over his mouth to make it stop, meeting those bright blue eyes and feeling the last of his resolve crumbling into dust.

‘I’ll do it if Pidge and Shiro do.’

Lance somehow lit up even brighter, eagerly whipping around towards the laptop, and Shiro sagged helplessly, looking betrayed. Keith had no pity for him; he should have seen it coming after throwing Keith under the bus before; should have felt Keith’s hand wrapping around his ankle the moment the wheels started inching over the knife-wound in his back. 

‘I don’t know how to –’ Shiro began, already grasping at straws, but Pidge cut him off.

‘You know that won’t get you out of it,’ she sighed, the ghostly lighting over her face painting her in whites and greys and making her deadpan even more hollow. 

‘Does that mean you’re in?’ said Hunk eagerly. At this point, he was almost as enthusiastic as Lance and Shay about the whole idea, and with Keith semi on their side, there was no way the others would be able to resist much longer. If Keith had to suffer through hours of pricked fingers and Lance’s frustrated half-curses as they attempted to make masks that would probably turn out to be barely recognisable anyway, then so did they.

‘I’m in,’ she relented, bitterly waving a cookie towards her camera, ‘but I’m making no promises that anything I produce will be remotely functional.’

‘It’s the thought that counts,’ hummed Shay in satisfaction and Keith suddenly had to wonder if this had been her intention all along. ‘Shiro?’ she prompted innocently.

Oh, this was definitely planned. 

As tempted as Keith was to call her out, Shiro had taken to ruffling through his papers in an attempt to avoid eye contact and the opportunity for some brotherly ribbing was just too ripe to ignore.

‘C’mon, Shiro,’ he goaded. ‘You chicken?’

‘No,’ he replied suddenly, delightfully defensive – Keith had always taken pride in being one of the few people who could bring that side out of him. ‘I mean, I’d be happy to but –’

‘Question,’ said Lance, steamrolling any rebuttle before it could take form. ‘Is your sewing as bad as your cooking?’

Keith snorted and Hunk began to utter what sounded like a prayer, making the sign of the cross over his chest. Even Kosmo seemed disturbed by the idea, a short growl rumbling in his throat over Keith’s thighs.

‘Uh… no, I don’t think so,’ Shiro replied good-naturedly, although Keith noted the slight twitch of his nose that only came about when Shiro was mildly offended and he had to hold back another laugh.

‘Great, then there’s at least a small chance that this won’t go horribly wrong!’ Lance cheered. ‘Team Anti-Rona is a-go!’

Keith furrowed his brow. ‘Team Auntie Rona?’

‘No, not Auntie Rona,’ Lance replied with a frown. ‘Anti-Rona like anti-coronavirus.’

‘I say an-tie,’ said Keith, pivoting slightly towards him. ‘Who says an-tee?’

Lance’s jaw dropped. ‘Lots of people!’ he exclaimed. ‘Guys, back me up!’

‘I would say an-toe,’ said Pidge with a straight face, chin in her hand.

‘Oh really?’ chimed in Shay. ‘I’m quite partial to an-too, myself.’

Hunk nodded along. ‘Gotta be an-tah for me.’

‘I hate you all,’ Lance scowled and a familiarity washed over Keith at his friends’ support (and their simultaneous betrayal of Lance). It came with a sudden and bitter aftertaste of the reminder that they probably wouldn’t be seeing each other in person for at least a month. He hadn’t realised how much he missed this. 

It had barely been a week since the confinement had started and yet, suddenly it felt like a month. He knew he’d come a long way from skulky loner Keith who spent his Friday nights hiding under the covers in his own ‘cave’ and googling conspiracy theories while Shiro tried to encourage him to get some kind of social life ( _‘I do! Look, I’m chatting with Mothboi69 right now!’_ ) but he’d never expected to get to a point where he’d gotten so used to having people around that he felt sort of lonely even with Mr Loud-Mouth right by his side and the world’s most needy husky stretched across his legs.

Dependency issues. That’s what Keith’s social worker used to say about him. Not in the sense that he’d had issues with being too dependent on someone; no, he’d had a problem being dependent on anyone at all. It was bound to happen in a child who’d learned to prepare his own meals before he could even tie his own shoes, and he mostly had his mom to blame for that. He knew his father had had a hand in it, but it wasn’t his fault that she’d left. It wasn’t his fault that he’d had to work three jobs just to keep them afloat on a rocky sea of debt and poverty. It wasn’t his fault that he’d died and left Keith too. 

That part of Keith, the little boy hiding in the hazy edges of his memories, the one still waiting at the front door at four in the morning and wondering why Dad hadn’t come home yet: he was the one who was cringing at the realisation of how much he depended on his friends now. But that boy was 5 years old and this Keith was twenty-four, and the kid’s silent cringing was a mile’s worth of slow and often painful steps forward from when he used to throw tantrums and trigger panic attacks when someone so much as offered Keith a glass of water. Keith had already had this argument with himself a hundred times since Shiro’s family had taken him in, since they’d adopted him, since he’d met this rag-tag group of friends and since he’d found himself falling for the man currently threatening to fill Pidge’s shoes with egg-salad. It was okay to depend on people sometimes. If he hadn’t, if he’d always listened to the scared kid in the back of his head, he’d never have any of the things he had today; he wouldn’t have any friends to miss right now. He could trust them: they were the most dependable people he knew. 

Speaking of which, it was nine-thirty on the dot, which meant…

Another window appeared on their screens then, and they were greeted by the sight of a bright orange moustache.

‘It’s working? Aha!’ The moustache pulled away from the camera to reveal that it was actually attached to a middle-aged man. He was wearing a blindingly bright smile and, for some reason, had a nervous twitch in his eye. 

‘Good evening, my fine friends!’ he greeted and there was a chorus of ‘hey’s in response.

‘You okay, Coran?’ Keith ventured in response to the twitch, unsure whether he should shine a spotlight on it.

‘Absolutely peachy, number four,’ the man replied in a pitch far too high for that to be true. ‘Tip-top, blip-blop, fan-ticking-tastic.’

Keith was not the only one looking unconvinced, and the combined power of their suspicious expressions seemed to do the trick, causing Coran to squirm until, in a mere matter of seconds, he finally broke.

‘Alright, you’ve got me!’ he exclaimed, his hands rocketing into the air and then slamming back down onto the wooden desk, his head lowered in utter despondence. ‘It’s my novel,’ he whined. ‘I’m hopelessly stuck once again.’

‘Aw, I’m sorry to hear that, Coran,’ said Shay sympathetically. ‘Is there anything we can do to help?’

‘I’m not sure,’ he hummed, sitting up straight again and stroking his chin thoughtfully. ‘It’s the science that I’m struggling with. I’m starting to think all this quintessence stuff is getting a bit ridiculous. Perhaps I need to revise my plot and refocus on the characters.’

‘Well, if you need help with the science stuff, Hunk, Shiro, and I can probably help out a little,’ suggested Pidge.

‘That’s very kind of you all,’ said Coran, ‘but I think I need to take a step back for a day or two; try to clear out the old noggin.’ He rapped twice on his head with his knuckles, then snapped back into a proper position, fingers tented in front of him. ‘Enough about me. How have you all been keeping busy, hm?’

‘Ooh, ooh!’ Lance started bouncing in his seat once again. ‘Coran, you should make face-masks with us!’

Coran’s entire face lit up and he rummaged in a desk drawer for a moment before pulling out a collection of three brightly-coloured, hand-sewn face-masks. ‘You mean like these?’

Lance froze suddenly. ‘Aw, quiznack!’ he yelped. ‘Guys, he’s already beating us!’

‘Since when is this a competition?’ Keith asked, quirking a brow at him.

‘And why are you still using that word?’ questioned Pidge. ‘You know we’re adults now – we’re allowed to swear.’

‘Everything’s a competition, mullet, keep up,’ retorted Lance, ‘and I’m a teacher, Pidgeon. It’s better to deny myself the luxury of swearing altogether.’

‘You swore, like, thirty minutes ago,’ countered Keith.

‘Yeah, but that was in Spanish.’

‘You _teach_ Spanish, Lance,’ he said. ‘And everyone knows what _mierda_ means, including your students.’

‘Hence why I use “quiznack”, are you even listening or are you falling asleep _again_?’ 

Keith blinked at him in disbelief for a moment before turning his back and slipping back down against his side in defeat, head lolling back onto Lance’s shoulder. 

‘Maybe if my pillow would stop moving, I could,’ he muttered, crossing his arms and getting comfy. 

‘Kind of hypocritical, don’t you think?’ snorted Lance, gesturing to a disgruntled Kosmo, displaced by Keith’s shift in position. ‘Besides, is that all I am to you?’ he lamented, his little pout returning as he swept Keith’s bangs out of his eyes. 

‘No, you’re also the bane of my existence.’

‘Ah, good,’ Lance giggled, his eyes never leaving Keith’s. ‘Gotta give me credit where credit’s due.’

‘Okay, okay, wrap it up guys,’ said Shiro, and Keith rolled his head in his direction. ‘No offence, but if Pidge keeps fake-gagging like that, I think Hunk is _actually_ going to throw up.’

‘Seconded,’ groaned Hunk, one hand raised and the other pressed cautiously over his mouth as Shay rubbed sympathetic circles into his back.

Keith noted Pidge, frozen with two fingers hovering over her outstretched tongue. She closed her mouth with an apologetic shrug.

‘Ugh, someone say something to distract me,’ moaned Hunk.

‘How about you, lad?’ prompted Coran. ‘Tell us what you’ve been up to.’

‘Uh, mostly stress-baking,’ Hunk replied, slowly uncurling from himself. ‘It’s actually sort of becoming a problem because I keep forgetting I can’t just give the extras to you guys and then I remember that and I get sad and then I start _sad_ -baking and now we’re almost out of places to store all the snickerdoodles because the neighbours won’t take any more and Shay and I can only eat so many and I really miss you guys.’ He finished his ramblings with a sniff and a few tears and it really had been too long since they’d seen each other in person because the action pulled at something in Keith’s chest where normally it would go ignored, what with Hunk’s habit of bursting into tears at least twice a day.

‘Me too, big guy,’ said Lance, ‘but hey, if you wanna _mail_ us some cookies, I certainly wouldn’t turn up my nose…’

A light bulb blinked into life above Hunk’s head. ‘Lance, you’re a genius.’

‘I’d say “I try,”’ he boasted with one of those smirks that acted like a curtain call for Keith’s exasperation, ‘but then, I don’t have to. It’s all natural talent, baby.’ He shot a set of finger guns towards the group and Keith scrubbed a hand down his face.

‘I’d kill for one of your snickerdoodles right now,’ he said, reminiscing about the first time he’d tried one, fresh out of an exam and feeling like death after two gruelling weeks of studying. It had been years ago, back when most of these people were fairly new to his life, and yet he’d still been greeted by freshly baked cookies and a smile that said ‘I will befriend you if it is the last thing I do on this good green Earth, so help me, God –’

Hunk had been right in the end. It really hadn’t taken much more than some light coercion to incorporate Keith into their little group, even despite Keith’s reservations about making friends, and in addition, Lance’s reservations about Keith himself. 

It was strange thinking about how hostile Lance had been with him at first (and admittedly, Keith hadn’t been much better), but, in fact, after a while, the way he and Keith had danced around each other like territorial peacocks had become one of the things that kept Keith coming back again and again. That probably said something concerning about Keith’s taste in men, but hey, Lance had fallen for him too. Besides, it wasn’t really the arguing or the relentless competition that had brought them together, but rather the softer moments in between. Thinking back, the two of them had been so desperate to prove themselves to each other when really, they should have just admitted how they were feeling and saved themselves the multiple embarrassments (and scrutinous glares from Adam) every time they landed themselves in the ER for their puppy-love-driven escapades. But every one of those escapades – okay, maybe like 75% – were good memories for Keith now. He wouldn’t have had it any other way, and he knew Lance felt the same. The rest of the group… well, that was probably a different story. Coran never did manage to get all that green goop out of his curtains.

‘You better send me some too,’ threatened Pidge as Keith wondered if the stuff had ever actually made it all the way through his digestive system. ‘If I have to watch you eat home-baked goods in one more of our work-calls–' She let out a huff. ‘I blame you for this, you know: I used to be perfectly fine with store-bought and now you’ve ruined my taste-buds.’

‘You mean “enhanced”,’ insisted Hunk, crossing his arms with a prideful smile. 

‘How is work?’ asked Shiro. ‘I hope you’re not having as much trouble as me.’

‘Actually, not that bad,’ replied Pidge, her eyes lighting up with that hungry spark that appeared whenever she was about to start talking tech. Hunk was sporting a similar expression.

‘We’ve been working on a new prototype,’ he chattered excitedly, ‘or at least the schematics for it since we can’t actually meet in person, but it’s really cool ‘cos it works by combining –’

‘Woah, woah, woah, gonna stop you right there, buddy,’ interjected Lance. ‘There’s no way any of the rest of us are going to understand what you’re about to say so how about we settle for it’s really cool and move on?’

Hunk’s face sank into mild irritation but he acquiesced. 

‘It _is_ really cool though,’ Pidge went on. ‘We just hope the company thinks so too. We need some major credit if we wanna be promoted next year. Don’t get me wrong, I’m grateful to Matt for getting us the job but being an intern sucks.’

‘Seconded,’ said Hunk with an air of exhaustion.

‘How is young Matthew doing?’ queried Coran, settling his chin on bridged fingers.

Pidge grimaced, the expression accentuated by the flashlight angle and Keith felt a pang of sympathy for her. ‘Okay, I guess,’ she shrugged. ‘He’s mostly bored waiting around to get back to the US so we’ve gone back to writing in code just to have something to do. I still can’t believe, after all the years he’s applied for the position, that _this_ is the year the company finally let him go to China.’ There was shuffling on her end and Keith assumed from the new angle that she’d flopped onto her back.

‘I don’t blame them for trying to keep the Holts separated,’ joked Shiro with a fond smile. ‘One company can’t handle that kind of chaos.’

Her responding smile barely lasted a second, then she bit her lip. ‘It’s so hard to get a flight to the US right now. I have no idea how long he’s gonna be stuck there. And he’s being careful but… you never know, you know?’

Keith tried to wrangle his expression, knowing that she’d never been one to accept pity, but judging by the way her eyes darted to the side and her mouth sat fixed in a line, she’d already noted the way her friends were staring at her.

‘He’ll be okay, Pidgey-pie,’ assured Lance. ‘You know, he’s probably safer in quarantine over there than he would be in the states. They’re taking it a lot more seriously than a lot of people here.’ He said the last part a little resentfully. ‘He’ll be back before you know it,’ he continued, and then he paused in a way that had Keith’s Lancey-sense tingling all over again; he didn’t need to be able to see his boyfriend’s face to see the devious smile curling across it. ‘Then you’ll be back to causing trouble and hacking government data-bases and –’

‘Shhhhhh!’ Pidge hissed aggressively, her melancholic expression taken over in a flash of panic and anger. ‘They’re always listening.’

‘It’s true,’ added Keith when Lance shot her what Keith assumed was a dubious look, despite the fact that that was undoubtedly the reaction Lance had been hoping for.

‘You guys are so paranoid!’ he squawked in faux-exasperation, and Keith felt his own smile grow at his partner’s dramatics. ‘Why would the government even want to listen to us – we’re not even doing anything interesting right now!’

‘Probably to check if people are hacking into government data-bases,’ supplied Shiro knowingly.

‘But what would they even do if they _did_ find out someone was hacking them?’ Lance countered, clearly settling in for a long night of playing Devil’s advocate against a group of high-level conspiracy theorists. ‘I mean, they’re hacking us right back by spying on us! Are they gonna admit to that? Is Mr/Ms FBI agent gonna pop into our video-chat to give us a good ol’ verbal spanking?’

Keith was about to launch into a reply, years of ‘cave’-dwelling and early-hours theorising with good friend, mothboi69, finally coming in handy in the waking realm, when suddenly, another window popped up on the screen and everyone froze, Keith bolting upright.

‘Um… hello?’ ventured Hunk after several seconds of silence. There was no video footage; only a grey window bearing the letters _AV_. ‘Mr/Ms/non-gender-specific FBI agent?’

There were a few more seconds of nothingness in which Keith felt each of his muscles tensing up one by one and Kosmo, sensing some kind of danger, roused from his dozing and turned towards the screen, letting out a low growl. Lance’s hand landed on Keith’s shoulder – out of protectiveness or a need for comfort, Keith didn’t know – and his grip tightened as he shuffled forwards, edging cautiously towards the last few inches of the couch cushion.

Coran was next to make an attempt at first contact.

‘Hel-’

An unholy garbled noise spewed from the speakers at top volume and everyone, Keith included, let out a scream of panic, scrambling away from their screens. Kosmo jumped from the couch, barking furiously at the laptop on the coffee-table, at the same time that Lance leapt backwards, wrapping himself around Keith like a touch-starved koala.

‘WHAT THE FUCK,’ squealed Pidge, as Keith grabbed at Kosmo’s collar to keep him from attacking the device, no easy feat with over six foot of boyfriend clinging to his torso.

‘IT’S LIKE SOME KIND OF TECHNO DEMON, WHAT DID YOU DO, PIDGE?!’ babbled Lance, but before she could take any offence, the sound came again, causing a second round of shrieking.

‘C-he-m-ear-hell-can-me no-. Hello?’

Shiro was the first to uncurl from the foetal position. ‘Hello?’

Keith was about three seconds and one more techno-demon screech away from throwing the laptop out the window, but then, finally, the video-feed began to load in at a speed of what must have been about 5fps, and a very blurry, pixelated image appeared in the new chat-window. It suddenly became apparent what, or rather who, they were looking at, and a cry of alarm rang out.

‘Allura!’

Lance detangled himself from Keith in a second, slipping forward to the edge of the couch and giving Kosmo, who was still barking, a firm ‘shush!’. The husky’s jaw snapped shut as Keith ran a hand over his back and he looked back at him, cool eyes asking a question. After a moment, Kosmo seemed to decide there was no longer any threat, plodding off to find somewhere quieter to continue his nap while Keith slid closer to the laptop in his place. 

‘Hello? Can you hear me now?’ said Allura, the distortion clearing up more and more with each word until her voice was eventually clear. ‘The signal here is absolutely dreadful.’

Keith stared in shock at the screen as their friend finally came into focus. Her snowy hair was pinned back out of her face and her usually bright eyes had a greyish tinge that made Keith’s chest squirm with concern, but it really was her.

‘Oh my God, it’s so good to see you!’ burst Hunk, his own eyes already shiny with tears, though he made no move to wipe them. 

Allura had become something of a cryptid these days. Keith wasn’t sure he could remember the last time he’d talked to her aside from sparse messages in the group chat: she dropped in every so often to let them know she was okay; busy, but okay. The last time they’d seen each other in person must have been weeks ago, before cases of the virus had begun to surge and even longer before they’d all been confined to their homes. He’d lent her a book on that day. He doubted she’d even had time to read it.

Allura’s mouth twitched with a smile, but her exhaustion was evident. ‘It’s good to see you too,’ she replied, and there was a genuineness to it that shone even through the veil of fatigue. ‘I just finished my shift, but I saw that you were all chatting and I didn’t want to miss another call. I’m sorry about the quality: I’m still in the hospital car-park.’

‘How are things at the hospital?’ asked Lance nervously, arms sliding over each other where they’d come to rest in his lap. Keith noticed the way his nails dug in at his elbows and frowned, looping his arm around Lance’s and gently tugging until the grip came loose. 

While one of Keith’s biggest worries during quarantine so far had been Shiro, Lance’s, in addition to his family back home, had been Allura. In fact, Keith knew he considered her like a third sister, despite the so-called monster-crush he’d had on her when they’d first met. Since the virus had upgraded from the subject of murmurings into a full-blown pandemic, they’d all known she, Romelle, and Adam would be some of the many on the front lines. It had been a terrifying thought then, and was even more so now if they let themselves think about it for too long.

Allura sighed, swiping her fingers across her forehead in a way that suggested a budding migraine. ‘I won’t lie, they aren’t great. We’re all doing our best but there are so many new cases coming in every day and we’re short on equipment.’

Keith gave Lance’s arm a little squeeze under the not so subtle pretence of shuffling closer. Subtle wasn’t really Keith’s thing, but Lance didn’t seem to mind, leaning further into his side in response.

‘Maybe we can help you there,’ tried Shiro a little awkwardly. ‘Shay and Lance are bullying everyone into making face-masks.’

Her mouth twitched again. ‘Is that so?’

‘Feast your eyes on these!’ announced Coran, reproducing the fruits of his labour.

‘Oh my,’ she replied with tinge of amusement. ‘I must say, I’m quite fond of the one with the moustache pattern.’

‘My greatest masterpiece to date,’ said Coran, bringing a closed fist up to his chest and striking a puffed-up pose.

‘Well, I’m sure it would lift spirits here.’ She let out a heavy sigh, burdened with the weight of what had probably turned into yet another 24-hour night(mare)-shift. ‘We could all use that at the moment.’

‘If you or Romelle need someone to lean on,’ said Shiro, ‘we’re all here. Call us any time.’

‘Thank you,’ she responded, but there was something sad in her expression. ‘I saw Adam around here somewhere earlier. He was comforting one of the student nurses. Romelle and I thought we had it rough being only residents, but there are so many young people here who’ve been thrust into this far too early.’

There was a short silence in which no one really knew what to say, and the atmosphere suddenly turned mournful; but then Lance spoke up.

‘It’s okay to be overwhelmed, Allura. It’s a lot, even for someone as hardworking as you. Just because some people have it worse doesn’t mean you’re not allowed to struggle.’ A smile grew on Lance’s face then, one of those smaller ones that seemed almost tiny in comparison to the sunny grins he gave out on the daily, but somehow held even more warmth. ‘You’re doing your best, and your best is saving lives! That’s amazing!’

‘Yeah!’ chimed in Hunk. ‘You should know we’re all _so_ proud of you, Allura.’

‘Endlessly proud,’ echoed Coran.

‘Astronomically!’ cheered Pidge.

Lance beamed at them, and at the sight of that smile, Keith felt his heart clench in a more pleasant way than before.

‘Romelle and Adam too,’ he continued. ‘You guys are like literal superheroes!’

Allura laughed, something unexpectedly unburdened, and Keith felt a knot in his stomach come loose; saw it unravel in everyone else too. 

‘You should be careful,’ she replied with playful look. ‘All of these compliments shall go to our heads.’

‘You deserve them,’ returned Lance. ‘We are but humble peasants in your service, milady.’ He dipped into a bow that ended up taking Keith, still latched onto his arm, with it, but Keith went along with it, spreading his free arm as if in a curtsey. Lance gave him a squeeze of appreciation when they were upright again and it went straight to his heart.

Allura sagged back into her car-seat, holding her phone above her head and wiping a hand tiredly across her brow with a smile. ‘I’d forgotten how ridiculous you all are. I should have known the moment I was greeted by a chorus of screaming.’

‘To be absolutely fair,’ countered Coran, ‘we thought you were a government demon coming to suck out our souls.’ His fingers wriggled in the air like spiders doing a very mediocre robot.

‘That was not what we thought,’ said Keith, though it was unconvincing even to himself.

‘Allura could never be a demon,’ commented Hunk. ‘She’s more like a guardian angel, but one of the ones with, like, a really big sword or one of those swingy things… what are they called?’

‘Swingy things?’ questioned Pidge sceptically.

‘You know, like, the long sticks with the blade on the end,’ he went on, ‘except it’s all curved and I think they use it for farming.’

‘A scythe?’ supplied Keith, missing his pillow and pulling Lance back into the couch cushions so he could resume his previous position.

‘Yes, that’s it!’

‘Doesn’t Death carry one of those?’ said Keith, dropping his head against Lance’s shoulder.

Lance shuffled to get them into a more comfortable position. ‘Are you calling Allura the angel of death?’ he asked.

‘No, no, she’s, like, the opposite, y’know?’ Hunk said, face scrunched with thought. ‘The angel of… life?’

‘Wouldn’t that be, like, God?’ suggested Lance.

‘Accurate,’ Pidge dead-panned and Allura laughed.

‘Completely ridiculous,’ she sighed. ‘I miss you all so much.’

‘Me too,’ said Pidge, suddenly looking glum. ‘I just want this to be over already.’

‘Same,’ said Lance. ‘I can’t wait until we can all just hang out again. I don’t even care what we’re doing. I just want to be with you guys.’ His eyes lit up with a dangerous spark. ‘Oh my God, wait, no, I take it back I know what we’re doing. Mario-Kart tournament. We are having the biggest Mario-Kart tournament ever!’

‘Is that really a good idea?’ Shiro inquired. ‘Last time, Keith nearly threw the remote out the window.’

‘It’s a stupid game,’ offered Keith in response, not even bothering to lift his head.

‘You’re just pee’d ‘cos you suck at it,’ Lance challenged and Keith scowled for a moment before lifting a hand to flick his nose.

Probably sensing another round of their trademark bickering about to break out, Coran spoke up over Lance’s gasps of offence.

‘I’m excited to be able to go to the park again,’ he announced as Lance poked Keith in his side, prompting an undignified yelp. ‘We should all have a picnic! It’ll be sunny by then and I can set up the tetherball post!’

‘Honestly, I’ll just be happy to be able to go outside without feeling like I’m breaking the law,’ mused Shiro as Keith moved in to retaliate.

‘We should go to the museum,’ suggested Allura dreamily.

‘Ugh, of course you’d want to go to the museum,’ said Lance flatly, fighting off Keith as he aimed a retaliatory prod towards his boyfriend’s face. ‘We should go to the beeeeeeach.’

‘The museum is a wonderful place to go!’ Allura argued insistently. ‘They’re opening a new exhibition in September – if all goes ahead, that is – and there will be a room made up entirely of mirrors and lights. We’ll feel like we’re standing amongst the stars.’

‘Woah, that actually does sound pretty cool,’ said Hunk as Keith delivered a swift jab into Lance’s unprotected stomach.

‘Maybe we should limit how many of us are allowed to go on this trip,’ Shiro said with a smirk, definitely directed at the two of them. ‘We all know what happened last time.’

‘Hey, look,’ squawked Lance, forgetting all about their current competition at Shiro’s accusatory tone. ‘We didn’t even touch anything! Not my fault the staff hate fun.’

‘You didn’t have to insult the guy though,’ Keith commented with a final poke to Lance’s arm to get him to lift it.

‘You could have stopped him,’ Pidge reminded him. ‘You were right there.’

‘My idiot is free-range,’ said Keith dismissively, settling with his arms crossed and Lance’s arm now around his shoulders. ‘Whatever trouble he gets into is his own fault.’

‘I don’t know whether to be touched or insulted,’ Lance grumbled, half-heartedly nudging Keith’s ankle with his foot, though he didn’t retaliate this time when Keith nudged him back.

They chatted back and forth for a long while, post-quarantine plans turning into reminiscing about past outings and all the places they’d nearly been kicked out of. Actually, Keith was starting to think maybe they shouldn’t be allowed out in public together. 

He really missed them. It was so strange to think that it could be months before their next disaster dinner; before they all tried to cram into Shiro and Adam’s place and tag team which of them had to make sure the former stayed well away from the kitchen while those who could actually cook worked their magic. It could be months before their next confrontation with an aggravated security guard who’d just caught Pidge harassing the guy at the tech store for bargains, or before their next movie night when they’d all sprawl out across Keith and Lance’s tiny living room on beanbags and lawn-chairs because the couch seats had long since been the prize to a valiant battle between work-worn twenty-something year-olds in search of a comfortable night of reprieve. It could just be Keith, Lance, and Kosmo for the foreseeable future, and for the first time since he’d met this exhausting band of chaotic individuals, he found himself almost upset by the prospect of a long break.

‘I suppose I should go home and rest before my next shift,’ sighed Allura at last, although Keith fancied the colour had come back into her eyes now. ‘I love you all. Stay safe.’

A chorus of well wishes and declarations of love overtook the call and she laughed.

‘You’ve got this, Allura,’ said Pidge. There was a fierce gleam of determination in her eye and the curl of her smile, the wild mess of her hair courtesy of the blanket that had slipped off only adding to the aura. ‘We’re all right behind you.’

‘You’re the strongest of us all,’ beamed Coran. ‘If anyone can save the world, it’s you.’

Her eyes glistened for a moment and Keith was afraid she was going to cry, but she took a deep breath, uttered a heartfelt thank you that had even Keith’s eyes prickling a little, and waved them goodbye, signing off.

The group was left with a rosy glow about them, bolstered by the stories and jokes that they’d shared. It was a sort of bittersweet feeling in Keith’s opinion, but judging by the current atmosphere, the bitter hadn’t outweighed the sweet.

The chatter went on for a little longer and one by one they all dropped out to finish some work or get some sleep, until Keith and Lance were left yawning on the couch, staring at an empty chatroom.

Keith stretched reluctantly, knowing he’d fall asleep if he laid there any longer, but just as he was about to get up, Lance rolled over until he was practically in his lap, tiredly wrapping his arms around Keith’s neck and humming a sigh into his chest. Keith let his fingers fall into his boyfriend’s hair and a hand slip around his waist to hold him up as he lightly stroked little circles into his scalp.

‘You okay?’ he asked with concern.

Lance nodded. ‘I miss them,’ he muffled into Keith’s shirt, his own fingers twisting in the ends of Keith’s hair at the back of his neck.

‘Me too,’ Keith uttered, squeezing him closer. 

For all his near-constant whooping and cawing, Lance did eventually run out of energy from time to time. It wasn’t the kind of energy you could recover with a quick nap or even a mug-full of pure caffeine, but rather the kind where you needed to sit in a quiet room and have a few thoughts to yourself for once. Keith hadn’t thought Lance was capable of that kind of social exhaustion, but then he’d shown up at Keith’s door at half-past midnight only a few weeks into their relationship, looking unnaturally hesitant in a way that had Keith thinking maybe he’d come to break up with him already. 

Keith remembered prodding and prodding him, heart hammering in his throat, until Lance had eventually broken and started gushing about the last few days in which he’d almost missed the deadline on a project because he’d promised his sister-in-law he’d take the kids for a day while she went to the spa for the first time since they’d been _born_ and he’d promised a classmate he’d look over their essay and also had to stop by at Hunk and Pidge’s several times because they’d both caught some kind of mega-flu and to top it all off he didn’t know if it would be okay to show up at Keith’s like this because they’d only been dating for a few weeks even if they had kind of been friends before that but he really wanted to see him and was that okay because he was absolutely exhausted and on the edge of tears and just really needed a hug and to sit with someone who didn’t need him to hold a conversation because he was so tired and he couldn’t sleep because his brain wouldn’t stop whirring and –

Needless to say, Keith had sat up with him for half the night, watching the crappy kind of videos you find on a 3am YouTube binge and stroking through Lance’s hair in the same way he was doing right now.

Quarantine was hard. They both struggled with being trapped inside all day, but Lance had always been exceptionally extroverted and Keith could tell by the dreamy look in his boyfriend’s eye every time they dove into another memory during the call that Keith hadn’t been the only one struggling with being so closed off right now. No doubt he was feeling it tonight more than ever. In fact, Keith reckoned everyone was; that’s why Lance had been working so hard to keep the mood up. 

Maybe Keith was oblivious about some things, but he’d always remember how one of the first _real_ things he’d noticed about Lance, one of the things that first had him tripping over his pride, and even his trust-issues, and into Lance’s arms was the way that he’d give away everything he had – and often did – to bring a smile to someone’s face, just as he had tonight. That’s why he needed Keith: because Keith knew he would give away everything _he_ had to make sure Lance always got his smile back too.

They stayed like that for a minute, listening to the gentle woofs of Kosmo in the middle of a dream from across the room and the occasional whir of the over-worked laptop’s fan.

‘What happens if Allura gets sick?’ whispered Lance and Keith almost didn’t hear him, or maybe didn’t want to. He knew it was a possibility. He thought about it himself from time to time. Allura or Adam or Romelle… any of them could get sick. What would happen then? What would they do? 

Keith wasn’t one for blind faith, but he had to admit, it could be useful – no: essential – in situations like this when there was really nothing else they could do but hope. 

‘Then she’ll get better,’ he replied with confidence he was trying his hardest to truly feel. ‘You heard Coran. She’s gonna save the world.’

He felt a shakey exhale, hot against his shoulder. ‘Yeah. You’re right.’

Keith didn’t know why Lance had so much blind faith in _him_ , whether he actually believed what Keith was telling him or if he just wanted to hear it said out loud, but Keith dropped his head against Lance’s, the corner of his smile brushing against his hair, and murmured, ‘Love you,’ praying that Lance would hear everything that came along with it: _You’re amazing. I’m here for you. It’ll be okay. We’ve got this. All of us._

Lance shifted up until his own smile was pressed against the crook of Keith’s shoulder, arms wrapped tight around his neck, and uttered a gentle ‘Thanks,’ drenched in something like relief, but more like contentment. ‘Love you too.’

If there was one way to describe the feeling of this quarantine, Keith would liken it to a snow-globe: it was like they were trapped in their own little world, time still moving forward, but slower, little flakes of reality fluttering over them at half the speed they normally would. There were odd moments of sobriety in which they’d peek outside the glass and realise just how sheltered they were, but even if they were far apart, the little glimpses into their friends’ bubbles of isolation reminded him that time kept on ticking, and they weren’t alone out here. It was okay to detach themselves for a little while. Reality was waiting, but let it wait; they weren’t in a rush for anything.

Everything that mattered, he had right here, between a tired old computer and in his arms.

Lance jerked back suddenly, looking at Keith with horror in his eyes.

‘KEITH, WE FORGOT ABOUT THE FRIDGE!’

They stared at each other for a moment before leaping to their feet and sprinting for the kitchen. 

Fuck all the stuff about snow-globes and little flakes of reality; reality came more like a giant sledge-hammer crashing through your living-room window.

The world had gone to shit, and that wasn’t really anything new; but as the night went on, the water was cleared, the shelves were replaced, and their kitchen slowly went back to normal, it dawned on Keith that they’d probably be doing this for years: their crappy refrigerator was going to keep on leaking, and as gruelling as it was, the two of them were going to keep on cleaning it up. Such was life. Such was their life. Maybe next time, they could rope the others into it too. After all, what else was family for?

Keith didn’t know how many more nights like this they had ahead of them: how many more video-calls and nostalgia sessions; how many more moments of chaos and laughter and panic and hysteria; but he did know that, watching Lance swing his legs from the counter and cackling as he thrust a meme from the group chat towards Keith’s face, he was grateful for everything he had, and so long as he had it, even a hundred kitchen floods couldn’t ruin it for him. Just like with everything else, it was one step at a time, and those of his family by his side.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! Please please please leave a kudos and a comment if you enjoyed it! It really does make my day!
> 
> A few of the things the characters worried about in this fic are taken from my own experiences -- I was Matt when I was stuck in France, I am Keith worrying about his sibling, I've been Lance trying to keep to mood up, and I'm every one of them worrying about their friends who are essential workers... I hope that if you relate to anything the team is going through here, you have people you can turn to too. If you're ever feeling isolated or anxious, please talk to someone, whether that's a friend or family or people online or a help service. All my love goes out to all of you <3
> 
> (Also that's how I defrosted my fridge in France and yes it's ridiculous and I had to do it all alone >:( )


End file.
